Do You Have the Time?
Tuesday, November 30
We have four classes left before finals, and we jumped straight into a new lesson. It’s sink or swim season and I don’t know what I’m going to do. We went over the new vocabulary before learning about ordinal numbers (i.e., first, second, third, etc.). They’re not that much different than the adjective form, except you add -ال at the beginning to make the word definite. But then we went from learning about ordinal numbers to learning how to tell time… and oh my god.
Y’all, the way time is told in Arabic is so complicated!! The literal translations will crack you up. Here’s how to tell time in Arabic in five minute intervals with their literal translations underneath:
1:00 — الساعة الواحدة
Hour one
1:05 — الساعة الواحدة وخمس دقائق
Hour one and five minutes
1:10 — الساعة الواحدة وعشر دقائق
Hour one and ten minutes
1:15 — الساعة الواحدة والربع دقائق
Hour one and a quarter minutes
1:20 — الساعة الواحدة والثلث دقائق
Hour one and a third minutes
1:25 — الساعة الواحدة والنصف إلا خمس دقائق
Hour one and a half minus five minutes
1:30 — الساعة الواحدة والنصف دقائق
Hour one and a half minutes
1:35 — الساعة الواحدة والنصف وخمس دقائق
Hour one and a half and five minutes
1:40 — الساعة الثانية إلا ثلث دقائق
Hour two minus a third minutes
1:45 — الساعة الثانية إلا ربع دقائق
Hour two minus a quarter minutes
1:50 — الساعة الثانية إلا عشر دقائق
Hour two minus ten minutes
1:55 — الساعة الثانية إلا خمس دقائق
Hour two minus five minutes
2:00 — الساعة الثانية
Hour two
Of course, you can be minute-specific, but these five minute intervals blew my mind. Notice where they start saying “two hour minus ___”. Language is wild, and I love studying it.
Thursday, December 2
Today was fairly tame compared to Tuesday. We went over our homework and reviewed some concepts and that was class. Oh, and of course, a boatload of homework was assigned to us. As usual.
Arabic Word of the Week
time / waqt / وقت